Health Network outage resolved, third party to review cause

Posted on 24 January 2023 by Prairie Post

Alberta Health Services (AHS) will ask a third party to review the cause of today’s network outage that impacted services across the province. 

The outage was resolved earlier this afternoon, and services are being restored. This includes Health Link 811, Connect Care and electronic medical records, and community and hospital lab services. 

AHS is contacting and rebooking any patients impacted by today’s surgical postponements, and we apologize for any disruption this has caused. Urgent and emergency surgeries continued throughout the day. 811 Health Link operated for most of the day with limited access before returning to full capacity mid-afternoon. 

The third-party review, which will begin shortly, will help us determine the root cause of the network outage and identify any improvements that will prevent such outages happening in the future. 

There is no indication that the technical outage was caused by hacking or any form of cyber-attack. 

“It is imperative that we understand what happened today so that it does not happen again,” said Dr. John Cowell, AHS Official Administrator. “I would like to thank Albertans for their patience, as well as the teams involved in getting our systems back up and running.” 

Alberta Health Services is the provincial health authority responsible for planning and delivering health supports and services for more than four million adults and children living in Alberta. Our mission is to provide a patient-focused, quality health system that is accessible and sustainable for all Albertans. Our current focus is on reducing emergency department wait-times, improving EMS response times, increasing access to surgeries, and improving patient flow.